Historical context

The postwar era was a time where the dominant culture was desperate for a reassuring planned order; but there was a strong intellectual undercurrent calling for spontaneity, an end to psychological repression; a romantic desire for a more chaotic, Dionysian existence.

The beats were a manifestation of this undercurrent (and over time, a primary focus for those energies), but they were not the only one. Before Jack Kerouac embraced "spontaneous prose", there were other artists pursuing self-expression by abandoning control, notably the improvisational elements in jazz music, and the action paintings of Jackson Pollock and the other abstract expressionists.

Also, there were other artists in the post-war period who embraced a similar disdain for refined control, often with the opposite intent of suppressing the ego, and avoiding self-expression; notably, the works of the composer/writer John Cage and the paintings and "assemblages" of Robert Rauschenberg. The "cut-up" technique that Brion Gysin developed and that William Burroughs adopted after publishing Naked Lunch bears a strong resemblance to Cage's "chance operations" approach.

The beats were certainly not the only form of experimental writing in the post-war period. Various other movements/scenes can be identified that were happening roughly concurrently:

• The Angries a group of post-war British writers with which the Beats are sometimes compared
• The Black Mountain poets (which John Cage was also associated with)
• The San Francisco Renaissance can be regarded as a separate movement of its own, with origins preceding the beats.
  

There were many influences on the beat generation writers: Blake was a large intellectual influence on Allen Ginsberg and there are striking echoes of Walt Whitman's style in Ginsberg's work; the novel You Can't Win by Jack Black was a strong influence on William Burroughs; Marcel Proust's work was read by many of the beats, and may have inspired Kerouac in his grand scheme for a multi-volume autobiographical work.

The full historical background arguably includes Henry David Thoreau, Imagism (especially Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and H.D.), the Objectivists and Henry Miller. Some points to consider:

• Gary Snyder read Pound early and was encouraged in his interests in Japan and China by Pound's work.
• William Carlos Williams encouraged a number of beats and wrote a preface for Howl and other poems.
• Pound was also important to Allen Ginsberg and to most of the San Francisco Renaissance group (Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, etc).
• H.D. was crucial to Robert Duncan.
• Rexroth published with the Objectivists.